Saturday, October 7, 2017

VARIOUS

A popular miscalculation in my view is the notion of a first
and last in literature. Presumably to enhance their subject’s importance,
scholars and critics have made out a writer to be the first or last of a kind.
The problem is that no sooner is someone proclaimed the first, someone else comes
up with an earlier specimen; and hardly has someone been pronounced a last,
than somebody produces a later specimen. But what exactly is the benefit of
being proclaimed a first or a last

whatever?

Of course both can be claimed by groups or coteries such as,
for example, the Romantics or the Moderns, in which situation a case may be
made out for one or another member. But what if, say in a poet, though someone
comes early but harks back to a remote precursor, can he or she be fully first?
Could not the Pre-Raphaelites be made out a last or a first?Where exactly would you fit in Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, both as poet and as painter? Even harder is picking the last,
as nobody knows what the future may bring.

Still, what good precisely is the belonging to either of
those categories? Does being an earlier writer make one a better one? Or does
being a last achieve that? It may come from dubious analogy with sports, where
the fastest runner or the last man or woman standing is winner of a special
laurel and plaudits. But to go back to poetry, is Chaucer better than
Shakespeare because his “Troilus and Criseyde” comes before Shakespeare’s “Troilus
and Cressida”? Why should art be comparable to sport? Physical skill or strength is nowise comparable to spiritual
and artistic preeminence.

So I think we should forget about making too much of
tracking down firsts or predicting lasts. At the utmost, we may designate
someone as early or late, but please, no superlatives, as they don’t represent
value judgments.

Now onto another subject that we may call exclusivism—making
someone’s name notable for departing from the norm. By which I mean a Megan
calling herself Meghan or Megyn, as some of them, still not necessarily unique,
will do. It catches the attention when read, but matters not a whit in
pronunciation. To be different, you must almost be African American—they come
up with often ingenious or amusing first names, but these do not automatically
make the bearer more interesting, let alone worthier.

But for vanity, nothing seems to register as more prestigious
than an unusual spelling. For me, perhaps the worst offender is Rachael for the
good, traditional Rachel. It is clearly derived from the second syllable in
Hebrew Michael (godlike) whose pronounced diphthong shifted to the first
syllable in English, yet retained the spelled difthong, unpronounced as such,
in the second syllable. But Rachel (Hebrew for a ewe, i.e. gentle as) never had
a diphthong either in Hebrew or in English.

Of course, the peculiarity stems usually from what was
chosen by the parents, out of pretension or ignorance, but a sensible daughter
ought to legalize and espouse Rachel, the established, traditional spelling. Is
a zebra going to subtract a stripe or a cat going to adopt an additional
whisker. Even if born with a sixth toe? These things are not like cars or
sewing machines, where a newer model is likely to be superior to an older one.

Next, critical overpraise. Why do so many reviews approve of,
or even rave about, shows that I find despicable? Is it that they cater to
their editors’ stated or unstated wishes, in order to get more lucrative
advertising? Or is it simply a matter of bad taste or low expectations? To be
sure, positive reviews appeal to hoi polloi, whereas my allegedly elitist
discriminations merely exclude and annoy them. Well, I can’t help being a
minority voice, but why shouldn’t that minority earn a place among all the
other minorities that are welcomed under our multicultural auspices?

What if we blend in with Toms and Dicks, but not with
Harrys? Or not even with all the Toms? Somewhere or other lurk our semblables,
our frères.

Finally, let us consider “Death and the Maiden,” the popular
name of one of Schubert’s quartets, whose second movement is variations on an
earlier Schubert song of that title, to a poem by Matthias Claudius? Think of
all the versions of “Death and the Maiden” in the theater and on the big
screen, most recently the 1990 drama by the Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman,
as political as it is psychological.

What I am after is why the maiden? Why not death and the
young man or boy or male infant? What is so special about the maiden? Well,
something is: her beauty, her fragility, her tenderness, her vulnerability--why
should they be doomed? She ought to be the most precious, the most protected
form of humankind, and thus in loss the most tragical. Thus also with other
dangers, such as that of the damsel in distress, lost, for instance, in the
London fog in a Gershwin musical.

Granted all that is changed now, what with feminism and ERA,
shattering of glass ceilings, enlistment of women even for combat, same sex
marriage and legalization of every form of consensual sex?If chivalry is no longer, independent
of questions of first and last, considered by most women as patronizing or
condescending, there will no longer be a seat on a crowded bus or subway
offered to a woman, or a door held open for her, we will find we can live not
only without it, but also without overwhelminginterest in where and when it began, and none whatever in
when and where it may end. We will have yet another example of the rather
supererogatory nature of the quest for the first and the last.

10 comments:

Surrounded by family, it's tough to comment on Simon's blog. My kids are asking questions, and so is my mom. Also, I've had six beers which are crowding my mind. In the mean time I'm typing and looking up at them and smiling,

"yes, I know what you're talking about. i hear you, but I'm commenting on John Simon's blog and it takes a little concentration if you don't mind. this SOB will rip me a new asshole if I make a mistake so please leave me alone for a few minutes. MOM! mom's on crutches because she's got a bad knee. gonna get a knee replacement. 80 years old. love you mom, but gotta comment on Simon's blog. new post here, mom. kids >> shut up, gotta comment on new Simon comment. very interesting stuff."

THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER (1963)First, I saw this neat little John Huston film on television when I was a kid and never forgot it. Last, I bumped into it on YouTube recently. Few American actors can pull off playing a Brit but George C. Scott does so right down to the body language. He also made a decent Scrooge in A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1984).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csloz62Xo6I

Thanks for mentioning it, my local library has a DVD copy! According to Wikipedia, it's the Huston film right after 'Freud' (1962) and right before 'The Night of the Iguana' (1964). Recently viddied Scott in 'The Hospital' (1971), he carried that one over the line (with some assistance from Diana Rigg and Barnard Hughes).

I've always loved your work, and this finde essay is no exception, sir. I recently bought a copy of "Private Screenings" and actually felt happy and young again, caught up in your deflation of so many pretentious hot-air baloons, so much kitsch masurading as high art, so much gildred trash worshipped in the 1960s.

As for your final question, why the maiden?

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. “To take upon us the mystery of things” — what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia — this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol’s “The Greatcoat”, or more correctly “The Carrick”); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”) — so what? There is no rational answer to “so what”. We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity — that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.From “The Metamorphosis”, an essay in Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

(Full disclosure; years ago, when I was ihn my late teens, I was unhappy about your dismissal of Carlos Claren's AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE HORROR FILM, but even then, I couldn't really say you were wrong.))

About Me

I've written for over 50 years on theatre, film, literature, music and fine arts for the Hudson Review, New Leader, New Criterion, National Review, New York magazine, Opera News, Weekly Standard, Broadway.com, Bloomberg News, The Westchester Guardian and on the Yonkers Tribune website. I'm continuing my contributions to the New York Times Book Review, Weekly Standard and New Criterion. Recently I've been seen on Heat Street. I have a PhD from Harvard University in Comparative Literature.